BP pay about 4.7% in dividends at the current price and are undervalued imho, just hope they don't have any more disasters down Florida way. Lloyds are rumoured to be reintroducing dividends this year at around 2% of share price and that in turn would push up the share price. Those are my two biggest holdings. Pan African Resources are an AIM company that pays dividends and is rapidly expanding in the South African gold mining business. They haven't been hit by the recent unrest down there as they pay their workers well so are a good bet for continued dividends and the potential for growth in share price. Don't take my word for it, DYOR.
As mental as it may sound at first I'm investing in Irish property. Rents haven't really fallen since the boom but the price of the actual property has collapsed - this equals being able to pick bargains (especially repossessed property which is being dumped for any price at auction) from the ashes of the market. Of course all major lenders are running for the hills, so cash is king - and the lack of liquid cash everywhere adds to the competitiveness of the final price. Mon the absentee landlords
Mickelback the landlord making his money off poor homeless Irish peasants. Well done you 9am on Sunday morning and you're giving suicide tips. please log in to view this image
Betfair shares are now trading at around £6.75, half their flotation price. They have a new CEO, and are changing strategy, looking to cost cuts and consolidate in the UK rather than expanding into overseas markets where regulation had them all tied up. The dividend was 7p a share in October 2012.
Depending on where you buy you can get up to 10% yield - apartments going for 30k at auction, renting for 400+ a month. You need to be flexible in terms of allowing DHSS (and as such factor in a percentage chance of the place getting trashed )+ tax + management fees, which is why the yields may drop below 10%. You can get property for absolutely nothing in good old loyal British areas of Belfast. The problem is the loyalist estates are empty and there's no demand for rent - check out the price difference between the Shankill in BT13 http://www.propertynews.com/Property/Belfast/CJBECJBE0863/40-Ainsworth-Pass/221826940/ and the (also working class) Falls Road in BT12 http://www.propertynews.com/Propert...Avenue-Off-Falls-Road-Belfast/221826973/Page1
10% sounds good but then there is all the effort and risk of expensive repairs. You can get 5% to 7% on quite a few FTSE companies, just have to review your holdings every 6 months say: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/8308376/Shares-for-dividend-income.html Wish I'd done that rather than losing loads on dodgy AIM companies. Lesson learnt.
Betfair are severely constrained by their business model - they offer a peer to peer betting system which means that every time a customer wants a bet he must have an exchange with another customer. This completely breaks down when you go outside of the highest quality events - for instance try having a bet on 'Scottish Top Goal Scorer 2012/13' and you'll find there is no money up there because no one wants to lay those events. Other betting companies are able to offer quick payout markets such as 'Next Throw In' - Betfair's exchange model makes this impossible to manage - so Betfair will never be able to attract the kind of mug business that the likes of Bet365 has attracted. When Betfair first started they had much better prices than the rest of the market, because the UK betting market was still growing out of it's land based shops model - now the rest of the online betting companies have responded to Betfair's threat by offering much better prices, to the point where you will almost certainly get a better price on the likes of a Premier League football game by going to Oddschecker.com than you will from Betfair (after paying commission). The only place Betfair still tends to offer better prices is the likes of Golf win markets which have huge fields - but their place markets have pish liquidity which makes it unsuitable for most genuine golf punters. Betfair's exchange model is also highly complicated and can scare away amateurs - they have responded to this by dumbing down their website - which has pissed off professionals who actually contribute most of their revenue. This exchange model has also been hard to sell to foreign countries which has meant that Betfair remains a UK-centric company, and the UK is the most competitive gambling market on the planet with little left in the way of potential growth. They left these other markets because they couldn't get a foothold in them and the license regulations also do not work with their exchange commission model. £400 a month for £30k invested is a gross return of 16% - I'm saying by the time you factor in all costs, including have an estate agent manage the property for you (repairs, bad tenants, empty periods etc) you may dip below 10%. You get a decent long term leaser in there and you are talking about 12-13%. If you don't pay yourself the investment returns, but reinvest them straight away on other properties then you don't have to pay tax.
Sounds like a good plan Mike. I wonder if there are parts of Britain where one can achieve similar returns, maybe somewhere poor like the North or Scotland?
